Plate Tectonics: Major and Minor Plates

The lithosphere is subdivided into seven major plates: African plate, Antarctic plate, Eurasian plate, Indo-Australian plate, North America plate, Pacific plate, and ______ plate

The minor plates are: Caribbean, Scotia, Arabian, Indian, Philippine, Juan de Fuca, Cocos, and ______ plates

Average thickness of the lithosphere covered by a continent is ______ km

Average thickness of the lithosphere covered by the oceanic crust is ______ km

Tectonic plates move at a very ______ rate

Alfred Wegener (1915) German scientist, introduced the continental ______ theory

States the continents are moving Earth was once a large continent called ______

Pangaea broke about 225 million years ago into the continents Laurasia and ______

Scientist did not accept the continental drift theory because it had no concrete explanation on how the continents drift apart. Wegener reasoned that the rotation of the Earth caused the continents to shift towards and ______ from each other

Continental fit shows that there is a close match between the coastlines of continents on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. (Eastern shoreline of South America and Western shorelines of Africa seem to fit ______)

Similar rock layers and mountain ranges are found in continents across the ______

Mountain ranges of the same age, structure, and rock types are found in South America and ______

Fossils of extinct plants and animals are found on rocks that are of the same age and these rocks are widely distributed in continents that are very far from one another. A.Mesosaurus is a freshwater crocodile-like reptile found in Southern Africa and Eastern South America. This suggest that South America and Africa were joined in the ______

Glacial evidence like scrubs and scratches created as plates slide along the surface are found in different ______

Harry Gess, American geologist, and Robert Deitz, American oceanographer, introduced the seafloor spreading theory - Explains how the continents drifted away from one another - Hot and less dense material from the mantle rises to the surface on mid-ocean ridges. This material flows sideways and pushes the seafloor away from the ridge in both ______

In 1963, British Geophysicists, Frederick John Vine and Drummond Hoyle Matthews, explained that stripes of magnetic materila on the seafloor providw strong evidence for tectonic movements - Magnetic fields has ______